Why caretakers are catching Ebola?

Caretaker making mistakes, says expert.As the number of deaths in West Africa from Ebola nears 5,000 and cases appear around the world, the question seems not to be whether the virus is spreading in this age of jet travel, but when and where. Yet there is no reason to panic, counsels Dr Leslie Lobel, a top expert on the virus. People, mainly caretakers, need to understand exactly what they’re up against and stay vigilant.

Careful and vigilant, he stresses. Not hysterical and vigilant.

The conventional wisdom is that Ebola is unlikely to spread like, say, influenza has in the past, because it’s hard to catch. The Ebola virus is not airborne. You have to come into actual contact with a sufferer’s bodily fluids – blood, saliva or semen – in order to catch Ebola (the World Health Organization says it hasn’t been found in sweat).

So why are so many health-care workers catching the disease? The answer seems to lie in a fatal combination of proximity, ignorance and fecklessness, explains Lobel, a Ben-Gurion University researcher, in an interview with Haaretz.

An Ebola sufferer walking down the street isn’t going to infect anybody unless he kisses them or coughs on them: droplets from the mouth may contain the virus. But a doctor or nurse or ward orderly may come into contact with bodily fluids unless they are extremely careful. They may have hazmat gear but may not know how to use it properly, which explains why so many health-carers have become sick while treating Ebola patients.

Now Texas is reporting its second case: a nurse at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has tested positive for Ebola after providing care for Thomas Eric Duncan, who flew in from Liberia with the disease, and died of it last Wednesday. This is the first known case of Ebola transmission in the United States.